Posts

On May 24th 2017, the very first game of Tweetsteria was played in the less-than-crowded front lounge of Cagney’s wine bar in Mississauga. For no good reason, other than it was a Wednesday night in Streetsville, the attendance was poor. But new attractions like Tweetsteria take time to grow; the more people who learn about this fiduciary festival, the more fans it will find.

The first ever game of Tweesteria had fourteen players and that was enough to watch it work. It was quite remarkable how Singles met for the first time and within a few rounds they combined forces to improve their odds of winning cash. The fastest readers and quickest writers triumphed by working together answering time sensitive trivia questions on Twitter.

Each person present was seeking some form of companionship and in some small way looking to express themselves. The game works because it provides a lot of satisfaction for men and women staking a quick claim on social media and then being cashed-out as correct.

There were dozens of hilarious moments that night. The image to the right crystallizes a moment in the mixer which happened before the Tweetsteria event began. During this impromptu meeting time when singles mingle to find partners there was a mini-trivia warm-up game. In that pregame match, one of the organizers flubbed a question, and then defended the wrong answer. It was awkward, and the incident was captured for posterity by an amateur sketch artist in the room. This talented lady certainly added to the high tech media made that night as she depicted other personalities using her pencil and paper. Her extracurricular fan-tweets displaying these cartoon caricatures of real life organizers were amusing and added to the appeal of this real life digital attraction.

The first game of Tweetsteria was legendary for many good reasons and that includes having Modern Mississauga magazine as a committed media partner. Jay Kana bravely introduced the concept of Tweetsteria to his readership and gave the first scoop on the sponsors. Two of the attendees who participated in the first event read that article and followed links to the sponsors to research them beforehand, the two winners.

Watching Laura Bilotta co-host the event with Raymi the Minx was a minor spectacle in itself. These ladies clashed once over improperly tagged Instagram images LOL. But of course both writers left glowing accounts of each other and their experiences conducting the contest on their lifestyle blogs afterwards.

Raymi the minx co-hosted Tweetsteria with Laura Bilotta

Raymi is a talented blogger with a big following and her own distinct writing style. She did a terrific job describing her role as a trivia game show host on Raymi the Minx blog and was definitely very public with her disclosure about the Sponsors! A few days later, much to everyone’s surprise, she detailed Tweetsteria game on her Raymi Toronto blog. Her big energy was appreciated by all players the moment the game started and she shouted out the rules; everyone in the room knew what they had to do to win before the game even began because she was so loud and proud.

The honest truth is.. It wasn’t until halfway through the first round that Laura realized the true potential of Tweetsteria, and more than simply being reassured the game works, this veteran Singles event designer and talk show host began to see how it could take off and become something like a phenomenon.

Probably the most well-read chronicle of the contest was crafted by Rob Campbell and entitled Tweetsteria Pays Singles to Play Trivia, published on Life as a Human magazine in British Columbia. The first out-of-province press, the article did well in this magazine’s Dating Stories section, accruing some modest re-tweets and Likes and shares on Facebook.

Here’s the list of ideas SMOJoe Blog generated for how to tell better stories using sponsored trivia.

TEN WAYS TO TELL A BETTER STORY WITH TWEETSTERIA

MAKE A HERO: Introduce a protagonist in the slide that participants must help accomplish a understandable task.

ADD ANOTHER HOST / NARRATOR / CONFLICT: Bring another narrator (a celebrity?) on board to share the microphone with Laura and have them conflict on certain issues related to Singles and thereby make drama that forces people to take sides. Host conflict can produce audience cohesion.

GRAPHIC BUMPERS and video clips would help. Insert video clips between questions to move a well crafted story along

HOST DIALOGUE: Insert more host banter and good old fashion storytelling between questions

ADOPT A CHARITY: Adopt a cause or charity to focus on raising money or awareness for…?

ADD STORY RICH PRIZING: Work the prizing into the story – a grand prize trip to Caribbean could inspire tropical theme questions and a story could evolve around surviving snakebites or being shipwrecked.

INVOLVE PARTICIPANTS: We can work the audience into the action better by directly involving them in the story. We could photograph a person ad project their image and ask the audience to research where they bought their distinctive hat? or their new shoes? and how much they paid etc Also we need to better encourage people to leave their comfort zone and abandon the friends they came with in favour of finding new and better partners to win cash

MULTI MEDIA? Maybe we could add some challenges on another social networking platform?

LOCAL CELEBRITIES: We can add guests to the show and have each of them relate a significant story byte in a montage of meaning to be magnified in the final sequence.

STREAMLINE SPONSORS and plant story bytes on their websites and blogs so Tweetsteria players are impacted by the story they ‘discover’ when researching the answers to questions asked in the show. So if there was a hero introduced at the top of the show, he or she could appear in all the blogs like Zelig (Woody Allen movie about fictional historical figure) and a Where’s Waldo story could emerge.

The second Tweetsteria is now scheduled to occur at The Addisons’ Residence (a bar) on Wellington St East in downtown Toronto. This popular nightclub will witness the second evolution of Tweetsteria and promises to be a much bigger show with more and better storytelling surrounding the same generous cash giveaways. Get your ticket now while there’s still time!